Like it or not, God is immoral.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by WarminIndy

 

It's my personal believe that the Christians in this thread are unable to defend their beloved deity from the onslaught of logical discourse, so they have resorted to a battle of semantics in order to avoid the true contention of this thread.

A transparent ploy, and painfully weak. I'm calling on it, right here, so no one misses the dodge: the fact that "God" apparently stands above our morals, which are based on his laws, and the Christians have chosen to pick on the "lack of option" in the assertion, when it chould be so much easier to prove it wrong and avoid the whole mess.

Failing that, they argue semantics and "not having the opportunity to argue", which they actually have but are wasting trying to prove that they don't have it...if that makes sense. After all, everyone here is open to being disproved, but you have to disprove it first.

Your move, my friends.

edit on 15-9-2012 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

Unfortunately you are correct.

Not just this post but in most of what I do, I try to draw the discussions toward moral issues but Christians will not have it. They know deep down where they have written their true laws, --- that the bible contradicts.

I guess because they have invested too much time and energy into their dog# dogma, they are not man enough to discard it and seek a better and more moral God.

For them, all we can say is near the end of this short link.

www.youtube.com...

Regards
DL

reply to post by Greatest I am


For those who cannot watch videos, I will type down, verbatim (PURELY verbatim) the relevant piece from Greatest's video:

Geologist Kurt Wise, who has a PhD in geology from Harvard, and said, "If all the evidence in the universe pointed towards an old earth, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a young earth Creationist, because that is what holy scripture teaches me."

Those of you able to watch the video, or willing, will find that in the last 30 seconds of the video. And really, this explains it all. Everything about Christianity. The man saying this ends by saying that a mind such as the one in the example above cannot be argued with, and is quite frankly, a disgrace to the human species. I will not argue nor agree with that assertion; however, I can completely understand that perspective.

To deny, in your heart, what you know to be true because of a book that is obviously wrong...what else will you deny, in the name of familiarity? In the name of tradition? That's what scares me.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by akushla99

 

Morals (for a supreme God)...do not figure in the equation...this is a viewpoint that is often mistakenly overlooked...

Then how dare we look our children in the eye when they ask us, "Why does God do this"? or "Why did God say that?" and pretend that we understand the first thing of what he was thinking?

Really, it's all just an illusion to make us believe we actually understand the world. Unfortunately, we a

pply human characteristics and the whole charade goes downhill from there.

In answer to being asked by our children...(your question)... It is not God that does this!

In answer to 'what God says'...I am all loving, all powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, ageless, timeless etc...tacking questions of morality onto a being such as this is splitting a hair that is not there...

...and you just repeated what I just wrote...

"Unfortunately, we apply human characteristics and the whole charade goes downhill from there."

A99

reply to post by akushla99


Well, if the Bible is the "Word of God," then he is the one humanizing himself. He did say that he was a jealous god, a very human emotion.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by akushla99

 

If you truly believe that God is All powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, creator of all that is seen and unseen - who are you, or anyone that would dare to perform this exercise in futility and arrogance?

We are clearly not speaking of the same god...

Thank you! Ladies and gentleman, we have officially reached the crux. The creator I believe in is NOT your god, because your god fits all the qualities named above, which makes him an anomaly, a quandary, a paradox. He cannot exist as you claim he does. He cannot be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and make us this way, then punish us for it, then be called loving and merciful when he has taken more lives, and been responsible for more deaths, than Hitler and Attila put together. If he is truly a responsible "God", he would have seen the future and done everything in his power to change it.

That's the long and short of it. And if you refuse to acknowledge that the mad scientist has ALWAYS been held responsible for his creations, then that is your personal problem, not mine.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

The fact is, either he's an irresponsible god, or not a god at all. You, and all of your brothers and sisters in this faith, refuse to accept this because of one thing: it is easier to ignore mistakes in bliss than to admit your entire history is a lie. We have never dealt well with pain, and this "Christianity" has served as a highly convenient backdoor for those who would rather not think about the higher concepts in life and just have the answers handed to them along with the instructions.

Since when have toys from the Dollar Store ever been quality? That's right, they're not. They break very easily. You just tape them together and pretend they're not broken, and if someone points it out and tries to replace it with a better one, you scream and cry and throw a fit.

Sound familiar? Thought so.

edit on 15-9-2012 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

...and now you have broached the process of FREE WILL.

If (in the robotic universe you are describing), we do not have FREE WILL (which is what is mooted in this scenario)...you would have no questions...the fact that you question is testament that you do have the FREE WILL to question (a robot does not question)...and subsequently, the ability to act...

FREE WILL confers, that 'one step removal' from dictatorship (which you are arguing at both ends of the scale)...it is a confused and tired argument, which holds no water...

You either agree we have it, or not...
...if you do not (and believe in a supreme being - or make the kinds of noises that suggest you do)...you are speaking of a non-FREE WILL universe, where nothing matters, because it is completely out of our control (as a mechanism) to be at fault...and predictably ascribe blame to a supreme being, using human attributes...ridiculous...

...if you do (and believe in a supreme being)...you need to separate what you think man is responsible for, and what a supreme being is responsible for...and not sound so confused about which is which...that is ignorance...

FREE WILL confers responsibility...

No FREE WILL...no responsibility...

...but then, you see, people are quick to blame others for thier decisions...even a supreme being!

A99

reply to post by icepack


You are referring to the passage where Yahweh was speaking to Moses through the burning bush, yes? The statement is more accurately translated, " I AM what I will be". It was more a statement of his infinity and a direct affront to the idea held by the Egyptians when concerning their own gods. One that hold they all had a definite creation or "starting point" in the primordial sea.

reply to post by windword


The reason the "emotion" was used was to help us relate to the idea. God is not intended to be seen as having actual human emotions. There is just a poetic way about the Bible.

What is being said beneath the word "jealous" is that He is holy first and foremost and as a perfect and holy God, free of sin and imperfection, will have no other gods placed in precedence before Him. Thusly, His reaction to His chosen people doing so would be equivalent to jealousy.

reply to post by Philodemus


God has a lot of emotions. He was regretful, angry, pleased, and on and on. If we aren't supposed to see God as an emotional being with human tendencies, then the Bible is wrong.

God orders all kinds of killing and gives rules for slavery and condones rape. He advised to stone to death an unruly son and played a chess game with Satan over the fate of Job.

He couldn't control his own heavenly population and lost 1/3 of them in a rebellion. Then he gives the rebellious lot the Earth, and puts us on the planet with the. After they have raped the daughters of Eve and they gave birth to monsters, he killed everyone and everything save Noah and his family.

This God is a messed up control freak, unworthy of my worship. I believe the God of the Old Testament to be a liar and a fraud. , not the creator of the universe.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by akushla99

 

Well, if the Bible is the "Word of God," then he is the one humanizing himself. He did say that he was a jealous god, a very human emotion.

Well said!

IF, the bible is the word of (capital 'g') God...which I don't wholly ascribe to...

...and IF (hard-line) christians (specifically), and hard-line 'detractors' believe, or want to use the bible as the word of God...the troubled and confused scenario presented by questions, such as the one posed by the OP arise...

...and anyone is correct in ascribing human emotions to an all powerful, onmiscient, omnipotent creator of the seen and unseen...a being outside of time - eternal...

...as you have!

But this would be ridiculous...for detractors and hard-line christians alike...

The belief in an ALL POWERFUL, SUPREME, CREATOR...kind of (by necessity) precludes the petty, made-up scenarios presented by hard-line christians...but, all that follows is a rationalising based on the inability of man to take responsibility for thier own actions....

...and what do you do when you cannot take responsibility?...you blame someone else...in this case...God!...or, if you believe in it...satan...

A99

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by Greatest I am

 

For those who cannot watch videos, I will type down, verbatim (PURELY verbatim) the relevant piece from Greatest's video:

Geologist Kurt Wise, who has a PhD in geology from Harvard, and said, "If all the evidence in the universe pointed towards an old earth, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a young earth Creationist, because that is what holy scripture teaches me."

Those of you able to watch the video, or willing, will find that in the last 30 seconds of the video. And really, this explains it all. Everything about Christianity. The man saying this ends by saying that a mind such as the one in the example above cannot be argued with, and is quite frankly, a disgrace to the human species. I will not argue nor agree with that assertion; however, I can completely understand that perspective.

To deny, in your heart, what you know to be true because of a book that is obviously wrong...what else will you deny, in the name of familiarity? In the name of tradition? That's what scares me.

edit on 15-9-2012 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

Thank you. I assumed that most could link up but it is worth the writing for those who cannot.

With one fingered typing, I do go for the short cut and I also like others to hear good intelligent words from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by akushla99

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by akushla99

 

Morals (for a supreme God)...do not figure in the equation...this is a viewpoint that is often mistakenly overlooked...

Then how dare we look our children in the eye when they ask us, "Why does God do this"? or "Why did God say that?" and pretend that we understand the first thing of what he was thinking?

Really, it's all just an illusion to make us believe we actually understand the world. Unfortunately, we a

pply human characteristics and the whole charade goes downhill from there.

In answer to being asked by our children...(your question)... It is not God that does this!

In answer to 'what God says'...I am all loving, all powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, ageless, timeless etc...tacking questions of morality onto a being such as this is splitting a hair that is not there...

...and you just repeated what I just wrote...

"Unfortunately, we apply human characteristics and the whole charade goes downhill from there."

A99

Yet scriptures give man and God the same moral characteristics when A & E, as God says, became as Gods in knowing good and evil. If we cannot learn from God as you say, then what right has he to punish us for not learning what he cannot teach?

You ignore scriptures to hold you view.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by akushla99
[

FREE WILL confers responsibility...

No FREE WILL...no responsibility...

...but then, you see, people are quick to blame others for thier decisions...even a supreme being!

A99

And some exonerate the guilty supreme being who punishes people for being exactly what he created them to be.

Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.

That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."

But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all sin by nature then, the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin.


Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil is all human generated. Evil is our responsibility.

Much has been written to explain what I see as a natural part of evolution.

Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created.

Evil then is only human to human.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil at all times.

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, we should all see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us.

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by Philodemus
reply to post by windword

 

The reason the "emotion" was used was to help us relate to the idea. God is not intended to be seen as having actual human emotions. There is just a poetic way about the Bible.

What is being said beneath the word "jealous" is that He is holy first and foremost and as a perfect and holy God, free of sin and imperfection, will have no other gods placed in precedence before Him. Thusly, His reaction to His chosen people doing so would be equivalent to jealousy.

edit on 15-9-2012 by Philodemus because: (no reason given)

If God was all there was in the beginning and all emanated from him as scriptures say, then emotion, sin and imperfection must have existed in him otherwise they would have emanated from some other force and then God could not be the creator of all things and must bow to a better creator as no sane person would want to live without emotion.

I don't think this statement is refutable.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by Greatest I am

Originally posted by HamrHeed

Originally posted by Greatest I am

Originally posted by HamrHeed
God is immoral because I said so"

You do realize this statement has been made many times?

ps he prefers to be called Father

Is this your way of refuting the premise?
If so, your apologising needs work.
Will you let my premise win by default?

Regards
DL

Your premise is that you're of God's mind.. to know how He operates.. It's a uniquely human question to ask.
It's beautiful, let's just agree

Not at all.

I can look at what is said and make a moral judgement though and you will note that so far, every theist has run away from doing the same thing. They know that they do not have a leg to stand on and cannot come up with anything moral that God is said to have done.

What does that tell you?

Regards
DL

Atheist here, but please allow me to play the devil's advocate.

Let me suggest that we do moral acts to other species that, if they were intelligent they wouldn't find these acts very moral at all. When deer or moose or bear overpopulate their environment, we say, "This is bad for the animals. They will eat all the food and then starve to death. So, the right and moral thing to do is kill some of them."

We set traps that are nothing short of torture devices, or we shoot them and watch them struggle away while the life bleeds out of them. We then cut them up and eat them with great joy. Why would this be completely moral, but totally immoral if a god did similar things to man?

I don't know if it's still being done, but I once watched a horse race where a horse broke its leg and fell. The owner, being the caring human that he was, rushed over and shot the horse to put it out of its misery. Imagine breaking your leg and someone being caring enough to shoot you in the head. Why would this be a wrong against you, but considered merciful for the horse? I bet if the horse could talk it wouldn't like this idea one bit.

Point: It seems that morality is not a universal truth, but is a set of rules set forth by the most powerful. Just as all of the lower species of animals live and die according to human whims and standards (morals), why would a god be considered immoral for doing the same things to us?

reply to post by akushla99

In answer to 'what God says'...I am all loving, all powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, ageless, timeless etc...tacking questions of morality onto a being such as this is splitting a hair that is not there...

Then why pretend to know? Why pretend to understand? Why fight in the name of a being that you couldn't begin to relate to, except in the most simple of terms?

It's simple: the "God" we are speaking of is a facsimile invented to give live meaning. That's not to say there isn't a higher power...the majority of people simply haven't recognized it yet. It transcends the modern understanding of form and divinity...if you really want somewhere to start, try the "Flower of Life", and numbers. That is the simplest translation of divinity, and it goes much deeper than that.

That is, if you're looking to quantify divinity.

reply to post by Philodemus

One that hold they all had a definite creation or "starting point" in the primordial sea.

i am confused. are you saying, the egyptian gods were created in ancient oceans ?

reply to post by icepack


We don't really know, do we?

reply to post by AfterInfinity

that is, why i am asking Philodemus.
or what do you make out his statements ?

reply to post by windword


Many of the conundrums that you are encountering are often battled by zealots by reinforcing the idea that God's governing attribute is His holiness. This is what makes the most sense when trying to rationalize what is to you and I, completely irrational behaviour by what is supposed to be a perfect being. I share many of your sentiments but I can still, within the confines of assuming certain presumptions revolving around the belief in God, understand the logic and theology used to rectify the seeming inconsistency found within the scripture. There is a unifying approach that can be taken when interpreting the Bible. A balanced approach of translation that weighs both literal and figurative writing is perhaps the most cohesive angle to take.

reply to post by icepack


It has often been held that the entire world and all the gods that control it emerged from a lifeless sea, yes. I forget the first name of a fellow that has written extensively on Middle Egypt, but his last name is Allen.